


Setting suns of the evenings that never were

by cruelmagic



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-16
Updated: 2015-05-16
Packaged: 2018-03-30 21:14:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3951991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cruelmagic/pseuds/cruelmagic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He wonders if he’s not clinging too much to his old values just because he’s not sure about the new ones. They are, however, build on reality of a world he can no longer call his own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Setting suns of the evenings that never were

**Author's Note:**

> The story takes place somewhere after Steve Rogers was found (and resurrected), between Avengers, and The Winter Soldier.

There’s a world where they don’t die and the sun never sets over them. Sometimes he dreams of this world, but in the end everything freezes and the light turns grey, and he’s alone again. He loses count in the labyrinth of memories and regrets, unspoken words and dances he never had. The darkness of the room wakes him, foreign air and the afterglow of the night caress his skin, whispering to him about the past he never had, inviting him to the world he cannot call his own.  
He carries an old photograph with him, the face he’s just seen, the kiss he still remembers when he closes his eyes, the date he never had. He’s a broken man, snapped in two, but the halves don’t fit. He’s out of time, his time, his life. His friends are dead, his love lived a life without him. Yet he tries to remember, he's not dead, but he doesn’t really feel alive. Just existing, following orders, fighting fights he doesn’t understand, entangled in a web of lies and secrets, feeling like nothing he does matters anyway.  
He wonders if he’s not clinging too much to his old values just because he’s not sure about the new ones. They are, however, build on reality of a world he can no longer call his own.  
The Avengers for that matter, or, how he calls it sometimes, self-made heroes. He has to be careful not to refer to them as the Howling Commandoes. Or say Howard. There are flames in Stark’s eyes and fist clenching when that happens.  
He jokes about his age, he’s ninety four, but it’s just a number, it doesn’t mean anything because he was dead, he was frozen, asleep with no dreams. He did not age, he did not grow, he did not experience, this doesn’t count as being old. In his heart he’s still in his twenties, still emerged in the war, his best friend fell just one day sooner than he did. And it wasn’t gentle, and it wasn’t just, and he jokes and hides from others but his dreams are filled with fire and blood—he’s seen darkness, baseness of men, experienced loss that ripped a hole in his heart, in his soul.  
He misses oversaturated colours of the city, and even the villainous simplicity of Red Skull. But that’s why he has to fight even harder for what he believes in, stand for it even when the whole world tells him he’s wrong.  
At least he has a lot of practice falling head first.

***

There are days that never seem to end, when the sun never really rises and brightness doesn’t pierce the grey clouds. Even the rain doesn’t really bother with raining, and words leave the mouth quieter and smaller. It’s a realm of a dream not quite woken up from, half conjured up by a mischievous being, half wished by the memories you want to forget. Memories buried in ice and snow. No matter what, there’s always cold nesting in his bones.  
He doesn’t want to forget but there’s no one to remember with, only one memento which is his own, a photograph of a woman, who had a life when he slept frozen in darkness. But he’s a memento himself, a man out of time, who didn’t survive the war, who didn’t experience the paranoia of the time that came after, when everyone could’ve had a secret, a double identity tainted with red. He hasn’t developed this sense of fear when new wars kept breaking out, gates of betrayal kept on being opened, smashed. It was the true age of spies and lies, and he still can’t comprehend this duplicitous brave new world.  
Every man for himself they say, I, I, I. But this is not how you put out a fire and the world is burning.

***

There’s an exhibition about him in the museum, there are books and experts and web pages, and comics, and dissertations about his role in ending the World War II. Psychological studies, experiments turning people into rage-filled monsters. There are stories that outgrew him, feelings covered in dust and time, wrinkles on faces he loved and graves he had to visit.  
His life covered in rust, demolished, repainted and refurnished. It smells of metal and ozone. Electricity in the air tastes like canned food, private means just put on the Internet. It’s not that he wants to stand above all everyone else and tell them that the old days were better, it’s just that he gets lost in this hyper-connected and hyper-vigilant world. He misses the simplicity of war, when you always knew who’s the enemy.  
He’s become Captain America and no one cares about Steve Rogers anymore. That’s what happens when your life becomes a symbol for the whole nation to follow, they take it and spin it, and put nice clothes and words around it, they write books about what he would think, what he would say, and he can’t claim that it’s the truth but he can’t explain that those are lies either. He’s trapped in the middle of a situation that’s far from white and black and somehow no one wants to believe in the existence of other colours anymore.  
He can say everyone’s been a little bit disappointed when he finally joined S.H.I.E.L.D. and started to talk back. “Aren’t you supposed to follow orders?” they’d ask and he’d look at them confused. “Supposed? What does that mean?” And they would sent him on missions and he would do what he does best, and Natasha would be there too, and sometimes he wasn’t sure if he was watching her, or if she was watching him. And they would talk, and they would laugh, and then they would fight together, but there was always something not said out loud between them, like a nail in a chair you’re always too lazy to fix and yet always surprised to find it there, trying to ignore when it pushes itself into your calf.  
And there were other nails, he didn’t know how to fix. When he talked to Stark they’d dance around his father, like the man never existed. Sometimes Pepper would come in and Tony would say how lucky he was, he’s found her, and Steve knew there were others, many before and it would make him think of Howard. And every time he saw a drink in Tony’s hand, he’d wondered if it was another of Howard’s many traits he’s found in his son. But he never asked about, what kind of father his friend was, he realised he didn’t have to, he knew from the quiet moments and lack of photographs. And so they’d fight again over something not relevant at all because neither of them knew how to talk about what really mattered. Later he started to wonder if it was his death that made Howard into a different man or if it was something always in him, he just refused to notice it back then when the world was falling apart, and the prospect of fatherhood wasn’t that important of a topic.  
But he sits in his apartment and tries not to wallow in the things he’s lost and wasn’t getting back. But he can’t sleep, and his body is refusing to hold still just for a moment, his mind active as ever tries to sort through the pain and sorrow of it all. So he goes out and runs just so he don’t have to think anymore. He wishes he’d have a way of expressing this isolation somehow but there’s no one who can relate, no one who can understand.

***

The dreams he has are so full of violence and death and hatred that sometimes he forgets how to breathe. Natasha asks him about it one night when they’re on a mission, but he lies and she doesn’t ask again but when they come back Fury wants to see him.  
“How’s the world treating you?” he asks and Steve doesn’t know what to say.  
“It really hasn’t change that much. It’s just different.”  
“Really?”  
Steve hesitates. “It’s easier now to buy food that doesn’t want to kill you. And you don’t need to go to the library if you want to read about the Civil Service Reform Act.”  
“Agent Romanoff is concerned.”  
“She doesn’t need to be.”  
“You know, the world really has changed. In some aspects we know even less, but in general, we’re better informed than your generation. We have names for things you didn’t even know existed.”  
“What does it have to do with me, sir?”  
“For you the war just ended, and the thing with soldiers coming back from war is… they bring something back. And sometimes it doesn’t leave them but haunts like an annoying little fly that keeps you up at night.”  
“I sleep just fine, sir.”  
“You’re really not a good liar, Rogers. We call it ptsd, you know how the Internet works, look it up.”  
“No official assessment?”  
“You’re still Captain America, Rogers. We can’t have a psych eval on your record.”  
‘Even if I need it?”  
“Especially if you need it. Just don’t let it influence your actions during work days.”

***

It doesn’t go well, and the wounds will heal quickly, but everyone is concerned.  
“I’m fine,” he says.  
“You don’t look fine,” Natasha replies but doesn’t continue the subject.  
Nobody died at least, he wants to say, but stops the words before they leave his mouth. He knows that it wouldn’t help. The words are like bullets and if he’s not careful, they’re going to hit something and do a real damage.  
“You should talk to someone,” she says before disappearing.  
“There is no one to talk to,” he says but no one is listening, so he shrugs and goes home.  
It’s not just the war, it’s everything after. He feels like a ghosts that haunted the world for decades until they pushed him back into his body and told him to do what he’s told. Like a different supernatural creature, like a golem, but this one talks back and everyone, S.H.I.E.L.D., the government, they think that their toy is broken because the manual says it should behave, stand in line and obey like a good frightened little soldier. Apparently they missed the memo from Colonel Phillips: “Rogers is one stubborn S.O.B.”

***

He’s encased in ice black as a night, so cold it takes his breath away and he can no longer scream from pain. For a brief moment he sees glimpses of a different world, a different life -- the one he could’ve had if it wasn’t for the hoarfrost gathering on his lungs.  
He dies in these dreams, and it’s quiet, it’s peaceful, darkness that embraces him is welcoming and warm. It doesn’t require of him to visit graves and ghosts, to fight by rules obscured by secrecy.  
When he wakes up, he never says out loud the words on the tip of his tongue -- he wishes that they’ve never found him.


End file.
